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Overly Attached Comcast Won’t Let You Go

At Comcast, you are not just an undervalued customer – you are also an indenture servant, and you will answer any question they have if you try to leave them. Ryan Block, former editor-in-chief of AOL’s Engadget before he co-founded the community site GDGT, posted online his recorded voice call with Comcast trying to explain to them they wanted to cancel. Comcast though decided that going Overly Attached Girlfriend was a good idea. After the jump here is 8 minutes of a 20 minute phone call tug of war with Block trying to cancel Comcast with a rep who just can’t take the hint, he just isn’t that in to them.

Below is the text explaining the audio as well.

Please note: this conversation starts about 10 minutes in — by this point my wife and I are both completely flustered by the oppressiveness of the rep.

So! Last week my wife called to disconnect our service with Comcast after we switched to another provider (Astound). We were transferred to cancellations (aka “customer retention”).

The representative (name redacted) continued aggressively repeating his questions, despite the answers given, to the point where my wife became so visibly upset she handed me the phone. Overhearing the conversation, I knew this would not be very fun.

What I did not know is how oppressive this conversation would be. Within just a few minutes the representative had gotten so condescending and unhelpful I felt compelled to record the speakerphone conversation on my other phone.

This recording picks up roughly 10 minutes into the call, whereby she and I have already given a myriad of reasons and explanations as to why we are canceling (which is why I simply stopped answering the reps repeated question — it was clear the only sufficient answer was “Okay, please don’t disconnect our service after all.”).

Please forgive the echoing and ratcheting sound, I was screwing together some speaker wires in an empty living room!